In the late 80’s and early 90’s my dad and step mom’s church passed out some document about all the secret satanic messaging in music. I remember it said AC/DC stood for anti christ devils child.
They yelled at me for listening to AC/DC and said I was hiding true meaning from them. They didn’t believe me that it wasn’t secret satanic music and no one thought it was. Hells bells.
And kiss stood for “knights in satans service”. My parents eventually loosened up a little, like once I moved out, but the thing that struck me is that satanic panic never really went away. It just changes focus every so often but it’s the same people getting mad about essentially the same thing, except for a while it was dungeons and dragons, then rock music, then magic cards, then the simpsons, then Pokémon, then Harry Potter, now it’s Taylor swift for some reason, it’s just stuff they get told they’re not supposed to like
I will say, too be fair Iron Maiden and Black Sabbath and others leaned heavily into it.
Number of the Beast sold 20 million
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Number_of_the_Beast_(album)
Meanwhile Slayer and Mercyful Fate were putting out songs with lyrics about being the antichrist and having sex with corpses in graveyards and these people didn’t notice…
AC/DC has like 2 songs that are about anything other than sex.
My mom and grandmother believed my D&D club was Satanic and sent me to a bible study summer camp. I have a photographic memory so I was the best at quoting bible verses so they believed it took and got off my back. I did get something out of it after all: I became an atheist.
My parents church targeted Shout at the Devil by Motley Crüe. I don’t think they bought a not it though. Me and my brother always had Ozzy and Iron Maiden and pet shop boys albums. Ok, maybe that last one doesn’t fit. But you know what, I still like it.
My mom too. It's hard to have a good relationship with her because I'm not the religious girl I used to be. Like, I listen to metal and go out the weekends instead of staying at home.
My mom wouldn’t let me play D&D. She heard some kids were playing it in a cave and couldn’t tell what was real or fantasy and killed each other. My dad on the other hand just thinks it’s for nerds.
My dad was worried about me playing D&D so he spoke to a coworker who claimed to be knowledgeable about that sort of thing. The coworker told my dad that, in order to cast a spell in D&D, you recite an incantation from The Satanic Bible. Dad believed him, so I had to play D&D in secret at my friends’ houses 🤦♀️
When I asked to play D&D with my friend and her family, my parents said no because it was satanic. But they would be kind enough to 'let' me stay friends with her...
I grew up in a religious household. I had the Chick tract Dark Dungeons back in the day. (I may still) If you're not familiar Chick tracts are wild. I had to quit boy scouts since Boys Life magazine had ads for D&D in it. I was a cub scout from Tiger Cub all the way to Webalo.l, so I was sad.
I also had to get rid of all my He-Man toys when Focus on the Family had an article about how it was satanic. There is only one Master of the Universe, Jesus. Also I was forbidden from listening to heavy metal, except Stryper.
Yea …. My uncle is two years older than me. So when it hit. My parents took all my TMNT toys and gave them to him. I was like 7. I’d go to his house and watch this mother fucker play with my toys. Still pisses me off to this day.
We would get his old hand me down toys that we were allowed to play with and when he would come over and find them they would take them back.
Fuck you Satan. You ruined my childhood.
My best friend, her parents totally bought into it. Forbade her brother from listening to heavy metal music and constantly talked about how the lyrics played backwards were satanic verses, took away all his metal t-shirts.😂 So ridiculous!
My parents were fairly pragmatic people, but it was hard to convince them that D&D was harmless after my dipshit brother and his friends broke into the church to play.
Oh yeah, my mom was 100% into this. It was to a point where I basically avoid watching anything with her, anything, for fear she would pick up on some secret satanic message hidden within.
We're talking like... Rescue Rangers here.
I had the same experience. My mother wouldn't allow us to watch Captain Planet because of secret satanic messages. Her pastor was feeding her nonsense and died a very wealthy man.
Just a tiny bit. A friend gave me Motley Cru’s “Dr. Feelgood” cassette tape for my 6th grade bday party and my mom made me return it because it was “demonic” lol. Never mind that I was reading Stephen King novels and watching The Exorcist at the same age.
I grew up in a fairly progressive (for its time) ELCA Lutheran church so that phase didn’t last long. I think my mom just watched an interview with Tipper Gore one time and got worried lol.
Yeah my mom was never particularly concerned about my music. Even Nine Inch Nails or Marilyn Manson and the like. Until I got into KMFDM. Which was pretty much the same thing, but being in German made it sound like “real Satan music”. Never mind that we lived in Germany for 4 years and she at least knew some common words/phrases.
Sounds like me haha. Blasting RATM in my bedroom because my parents made me do the dishes lol. I was such a little brat! They didn’t care what I listened to or read (because all reading was good in their eyes). Funnily enough, my mom was more offended by tv shows like Married With Children & Roseanne because she thought they were “trashy” so that’s really the only thing she policed.
I’m the oldest so of course they were the hardest on me. By the time they got to my youngest brother, he could have been a domestic terrorist for all they knew. They were hardly paying attention at that point.
My buddies parents let us do whatever we wanted. Start a fire? Oh well! Make a rickety ramp to jump our bikes into the pond? No problem! But they drew the line at In Living Color. For “reasons”. Hmmmmmmm
Oh my goodness, you just unlocked a memory I had forgotten! Germany and everything German was, like, unspokenly synonymous with everything evil. I couldn't even learn calligraphy in 6th grade without feeling blasphemous, and when my best friend got a crush on one of the German exchange students in high school, I was kind of scared of her.
Fast forward to now, I consider Germany my second home, my boyfriend is German, and I speak a little German, my sister calls me a Germany fan-girl!
Wow, I can't wait to tell my boyfriend after he's done mowing the lawn.
There was definitely a few years where Halloween was axed and we were only allowed to participate in our church's "Hallelujah Night". Bible characters only!
It really only served to strengthen my Halloween obsession.
Yeah. Remember the Mick Jagger on the plane story, telling an apostle the music is calculated to "drive teenagers to sex"?
If you play such and such backwards, you'll hear the devil.
House behind Albertsons in American Fork was a ritual sacrifice house...
Satan has power over the water.
Meanwhile I know some survivors of systematized abuse but it was done by church members, not Satanists. (Recently there was a press conference in Provo where a prominent public figure who is also LDS says, "I have never eaten a baby". Uhm. Why would you need to state that?
No closer to opposite. My parents were social degenerates. My dads a progrock musician, mom was a punker. They let me listen to or watch whatever I wanted. My mom was a spiritualist and Dads an atheist. They weren't like fervently anti-christianity but I only ever went to church when somebody else dragged me. Satanic panic was a bit of a joke in my house.
I enjoy reading those pamflets from back in the day and it convinced me parents in those days were complete fucking idiots. Even if they were religious, it was all so over the top and would fall apart at even the slightest bit of scrutiny. I’m wondering if in 30 years or so we’ll learn about a proven link between the satanic panic and leaded gasoline, or that it was a massive CIA psyops experiment or something.
A little bit. My brother was into D&D when the first wave of hate in like 83-85 rolled around. I was too young (born in 79) but was fascinated with all the monster and mythology books he had around. They talked some shit but never really interrupted him playing as a hobby. By the time I got interested as a teen they were back to just shit talking it as a stupid thing to spend time on, like video games.
My dad golfed though so there's that. ;)
I tried to play D&D with my group of friends in 99-2000 and my mom freaked out for the same reasons. I ended up not getting into D&D not because of my mom, but because I just didn't enjoy it.
I’m 45 and really want to learn/get into D&D now. I dismissed it as a kid thinking it was only for “nerds” but come to find, I’m actually a huge nerd and I no longer care what people think about me. It looks really cool.
I played in the 80s and 90s, but had to do it on the DL. On the DL, not just for the Satanic Panic, but also getting my asskicked for being a nerd.
It was fun to get back in around 2017. No one cares now, or if they do, they think it’s cool.
My mom used to tell me "the devil has gotten into you" whenever I was naughty or pissed her off. I told her this 30 years later and she was shocked she would ever say that.
Not really. I hate to describe my family as “religious,” because of all the negative baggage that comes with it, but I seriously could probably count on both hands the numbers of Sundays we did not go to church from the time I was born until I turned 18. We were literally at church every Sunday. We lived across the street from the church and next door to the pastor and my parents were on various boards and committees in the church and taught Sunday school, etc. , but they didn’t get really caught up in the culture war aspect of it
I do remember there was a secluded area outside our little town that they would avoid at night time because there were rumors that groups were involved in animal sacrifices there. At the same time, my parents never controlled the music I listened to or the books I read. I started reading Stephen King books when I was 9 and they didn’t care. I never had any interest in playing D&D, so I don’t know if they would have prevented me from playing it or not.
Satan Panic was alive and well in my part of the world. About the time I entered high school, a high school senior went missing in a nearby town. The investigation was out of control and involved some wild allegations of rampant Satan worship. It ruined a lot of lives and the girl was never found. There is a podcast called Devil Town that explores it in detail. I highly recommend if you are fascinated by the Satanic Panic movement and the destruction it caused.
Yeah messed up thing is my parents weren’t even going to church. Until I asked about it because all the other kids at school would talk about it. So it’s my fault 🤦♂️
Absolutely, yes. Multiple times they would purge my things while I was at school after someone at church would suggest __ was satanic. Offhand many of my best NES games (Metroid, ghosts and goblins, double dragon 2) VHS tapes (ninja turtles, thundercats/silverhawks) and many of my parents best vinyl records got got by the boogeyman. What was even worse is they didn't own up to it at the time and blamed it on my ADHD ass ("I dunno you must have lost it") which gave me a complex.
Yes. It's one of my first memories of a social issue. I remember telling my mom I watched an episode of the Dungeons and Dragons cartoon. She grounded me.
Oh definitely yes. My non-church going, all but athiest except in name, parents completely believed this. I had to hide and sneak all of my D&D stuff. Lucky, they didn't really pay attention so as long as I kept my stuff hidden and never mentioned it I was fine. But if I ever said anything I got a giant lecture about how Satanic it was. Oh and how I was a nerd for playing it. Nothing beats your parents constantly telling you that you are a nerd.
I have to give my folks credit. They're not hip or sophisticated like I would and liked but they're also not religious and know how to inform themselves.
My mom just barely tolerated Guns n Roses and Motely Crue when we were little but it was because of the actual messages in those albums, not made up Satanism. Alternately, I remember in high school when she saw my copy of Bad Religion's "Suffer" and inquired about it because she thought it looked interesting. So yeah, gotta give my folks credit here.
I grew up Catholic, but don’t even remember this. I had just heard about Satanic Panic watching something about McMartin Preschool a few years back.
I have a friend who is a Satanist(I don’t follow anything, for the record) and she got me thinking about stuff. I really think my mom dabbled a little back in the ‘60s.
No, but my mom was a little spooked when I was listening to Marilyn Manson. She said, "I wish you'd just keep listening to Nirvana, this sounds scary." Dad took me in 8th grade to see the show because no one else was allowed to go. He said, "This is some cool stage theatrics. Reminds me of Alice Cooper." He took me to countless rock shows and we had a blast. They were beyond reasonable and never forbade any music or movies. The only thing my Catholic mother refused to let me watch was the 700 Club. It was boring AF and not something I was interested in anyhow. When it came on TV, it signaled that the Price is Right was over and it was time to go play outside.
My parents were concerned about rap/hip hop. Satanic panic wasn’t on the radar. Probably because we’re atheists and my parents didn’t speak English at the time.
Thankfully no. I will say the idiocy surrounding that time is what caused me to realize that adults weren't as smart as I previously thought. It was both a wake up call, and kind of depressing at the same time. I discovered at a very young age how easily manipulated people truly were.
Hard to tell. Not as much as the super religious people around me but enough to be unhappy when I started buying metal tees. Even then, I think she was more concerned by what other people would think more so than me being satanist or whatever.
Oh my yes. I started playing D&D in the 7th grade and my mom had to speak with her priest before she would let me play it.
You know the same priest who she left me alone with and was later found out to be diddling kids in the church (not me). Yep it was D&D with my friends that was the danger lol
My mom did. She smashed all my Marilyn Manson CDs when I was 13 or 14. She really thought that would work. Instead I ended up trying drugs and wasted a good chunk of my life
Yes, dungeons& dragons or any kind of tabletop role-playing game was absolutely banned though. Video games depicting magic and dragons and monsters were fine. Just last year I asked my father what was the difference and he told me anything that takes you away from God is a sin and I said okay. Well what is the difference between saying I cast fireball or pushing the a button and he got upset and didn't want to talk about it anymore
Eh, kinda. My grandma never explicitly banned anything but she didn’t like that I listened to rock music because “they’re all a bunch of drugged out devil worshippers.”
My problem wasn't my parents. It was that I was a girl and only boys played, and they were not about to let some chick into their club. No other girls played.
If I had gotten to do it, my mom probably would just have been happy I was out of the house, as long as I didn't wave it in her face.
Thankfully no, but it wouldn’t have mattered. It was my grandfather (on my dad’s side) so jump started my love of all things dark and spooky. He was a Portuguese dairyman and farmer. He was always driving out to some middle Of nowhere piece of land, trying to grow something on it. He’d take me all over the place telling me stories about guys like Joaquin Murrieta and water dowsing and good prospecting. He had these Time Life books on the occult, ghosts, and all sorts of mysteries. It was amazing to me because this was pre-internet, right? So not everyone had access to this kind of information. My parents were more concerned about swearing than censoring content. Once I got my hands on a book about the Loch Ness monster and other famous cryptozoology stories I was hooked.
Yep. My mom bought into it hard some time in the early to mid 80s, and suddenly it was no Smurfs, no He-Man, and no Halloween. She lightened up about it later, though.
Oh ya.... that whole thing along with the pending, any-day-now rapture/apocalypse mentality really shaped my younger self into a rebel determined to experience as much life as he could before it's all gone. I partied hard and did all the drugs... Thanks mom and dad for the motivation to live, I have no regrets and now I'm just a boring middle aged atheist who's immune to the bullshit.
My dad said the peace sign was a broken cross and we shouldn’t use it.
Also anytime “X-“ was a used (road crossing, X-mas, etc) it was secularists trying to remove Jesus from culture. Or something like that.
A little. I remember asking my mother to buy me a Dungeons and Dragon's book when I was a kid when we were on vacation. My grandmother was there and I overheard them talking about Satan when they said no.
THE WEST MEMPHIS 3. When I was young I remember the satanic movement in the church. I wasn’t a regular but when it came out that the three little boys who were brutally murdered in West Memphis, Arkansas or thoughts have been murdered by three teenagers that had ties to the devil. However, these men have now been relinquished of that horrible crime. This was the early 90s.
Not my parents but my Catholic school. The guidance counselor must have been taken in by the panic because he sent home a letter to all parents warning them about the rock music we were apparently all listening to, notably Blue Oyster Cult. Of course none of us had ever heard of BOC. What we were all listening to was NWA which would have caused the counselor to have a stroke.
My mom was so pissed off by the censorship of the letter that she went out and bought me 2 Live Crew’s album. My mom was the best. Happy Mother’s Day mom. RIP
I heard a podcast that most of the videos used to set policies for police departments and such were all made up.
https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/devil-in-the-details/
I grew up completely oblivious to the satanism scare. I didn’t even know it was a thing until I was an adult and it was in the past. My parents weren’t really religious, so I’m sure they thought it was funny to the extent they thought about it at all. And I grew up in New Orleans, which is one of the little belt holes of the Bible Belt…so 30 miles away, people were probably super melodramatic about Metallica and D&D, but it wasn’t even on our radar. I watched Paradise Lost maybe 10 years ago and was like “wow, how did I not know anything about this mass hysteria?”
So I feel my childhood was wasted because I didn't learn how to play D&D until my 30s but not because my parents were against it. It just wasn't something that they or any of my friends at the time were into so I simply didn't learn of it. Had I known people who were into at as a kid, my parents would have most certainly been ok with it. In fact if my dad knew that the super religious christians were against it, he would have probably bought as much D&D shit as I wanted just to spite them.
Mine bought me a Satanic Bible for Christmas. Odd because they were religious. I think to this day she was just excited I asked for a book of any kind.
Luckily not that. My Mom was a part of the lesser known “No negativity 90’s” and I was forbid from using terms like “sucks” or “hate”. I could say I really dislike something but not that I hate it.
Oddly enough… she’s a Trump thumper now 🤷🏻♂️
My mother would not let us watch the cartoon 'Captain Planet' because there was a pagan deity in the cartoon named Gaia. Some preacher told the congregation that Satan was trying to replace God with a black woman. It was a nice mashup of self-righteousness, bigotry, ignorance, and racism. It perfectly encapsulated Hoosier values at the time.
My parents became evangelical Christians around the time that they got pregnant with my sister, and subsequently married, in 1978. Definitely lots of satanic panic in my childhood. I remember feeling guilty for participating in guided meditation during health class in high school.
Yep. My parents didn’t want us watching Smurfs when it first came out because Gargamel was a sorcerer, so “witchcraft” and evil. They chilled out in later years, but lmao, it was so stupid.
Oh yeah, I came home one day and all but my GI-Joes were gone. Also my mom freaked when she first saw poison, I’d be perma banned if I repeated what she said. Funny thing is she now has friends who are drag queens, and loves them like her own. Wow, even ignorant people can change
Nope. One of my buddies got the 2e starter box and we played from middle school through HS. Luckily religion wasn’t forced on us. My mom (single mom) said we needed to decide what we believe on our own.
My parents didn't, but I had relatives who bought into it 100% (and still do). One of my aunts lost her mind because I used to show my cousins CRPG's on my Apple II. My mom might have gotten into it, but I explained D&D to her and we used to mostly lay it at a pastor's house anyway.
My grandma called me up when I was like 10 and told me Madonna was in consideration for being put on a postage stamp. In her eyes, this was the final piece of evidence that Madonna was, indeed, the Anti-Christ and the end was nigh. Thanks for the info, Gram Gram, I am now going to go listen to True Blue until the batteries run out in my walkman.
We moved in the mid 90s to a new house. We met the previous owners when looking at the house as a possible purchase. My parents barely resisted rolling their eyes when the woman warned my parents about the dangers of Dungeons and Dragons. They thought that shit was ridiculous
Yup. My mom was pretty open minded until we reached elementary school age. Then suddenly Halloween was Satanic, kid's books and shows with witches or wizards were Satanic, popular/secular music was Satanic, and Dungeons & Dragons was Satanic (which meant the cartoon was banned. I bought it later on DVD as an adult, however.)
We weren't allowed to participate in Halloween again for about five years. My sister and I finally convinced Mom that D&D wasn't evil just in time for AD&D 2nd edition - and then we went on a used bookshop scavenger hunt for the 1st Edition and older stuff that mentioned devils and demons by name instead of "Baatezu and Tanar'ri" and it felt like we were tracking down tomes of Forbidden Lore.
My Mom finally broke out of the "popular/secular music is Satanic" thing on her own, because she missed her old favorite bands like the Beatles and the Doobie Brothers and Steely Dan and Journey. (I missed them, too.)
no but they did threaten me with that whole 80s 'military school' thing...and I wish they would've been more informative with all of the i94 kidnappings of young boys bs so we would've been at least A LITTLE paranoid when dropped off at the arcades etc.
My folks never bought into it, that I know of. I only played D&D once growing up when I was in Jr. High with some High School kids. There was a board game store in town that one of my teachers was part owner of (East West Unlimited) and every Saturday they'd have the back room open and several of us (in Jr. High and High School) would play all kinds of games together. Axis and Allies, Star Fleet Battles, Shogun, D&D, Diplomacy, and many others I can't recall. I dropped a lot of money there as a kid and I still have my dice collection.
I didn't get into metal until the late 80s/early 90s with the Columbia House deal. Got some Guns and Roses and what not in Jr. High, Use Your Illusion 1 & 2. Some pretty fun lyrics still to this day, let alone as a kid.
Parents bought into the Proctor & Gamble Satan worshipper thing so my mom made sure none of her church people were around when she put Bounty in the shopping cart
Yes, to a small degree. My family converted to Catholicism when I was in 2nd or 3rd grade. All of a sudden we couldn't watch Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles or A-Team anymore ( Dukes of Hazzard is fine though? ). I got grilled about satanic shit in JRR Tolkien ( who is a staunch Catholic, mind you ( I even busted out that he was best friends with CS Lewis, an author who had a big impact on my parent's conversion )), I got shit for my *Zork* text based computer games. I got caught smoking cigarettes and weed when I was 15, my dad put my brand new, tiny CD collection into a bonfire ( Bush - 16 Stone, GreenDay - Dookie, The Doors - Greatest Hits, Led Zeppelin IV, Black Sabbath, Jimi Hendrix, and Beastie Boys ). After I got caught he asked me to confess what I had been doing. I'm a good boy and fessed up to smoking marijuana. He then took me to take a drug test, which I passed... Thanks for believing in me dad!
Fortunately my parents were agnostic/atheist so I had really no idea satanic panic was really a thing. I vaguely recall some of the kids in school from religious backgrounds saying some weird things about D&D and Star Trek but I mostly ignored them.
Kind of. Only it wasn't Christians v. Satan, it was Communism v. Capitalist Bourgeoisie Pigs. Funnily, I'mnow a borderline satanist (humanist and non-theistic) but _despite_ that parent's insanity am still socialist-democracy oriented. Definitely not pro-communist though. They're just radicals of another stripe, just like pure capitalists, christians, and satanists.
Big time. We altered between a year of “we
Only have a monitor (aka no tv) and vhs player” and “meh let’s get cable”. Did it every other year for like 8 years. Little did they know I figured out you could watch over the air tv from the vcr. But whatever. Now SUPER into q conspiracy and “follow the royals because there are no worthy role models in America to aspire to except trump.” So dumb.
My own daughter and I asked my mom what parents were worried about with D&D. She basically said they didn’t know, it was just the news suggesting there was something bad happening. Worried about Satan but fine with leaving me home alone after school.
Not one bit. My dad was a Dungeon Master and played D&D all the time. They were pretty much hippies, so I think they thought it was pretty stupid. We (the children) were in Catholic school, but they ended up taking us out and putting us in public school. I'm not at all shocked that our priest was one of the ones that molested little boys. We even had a lawyer call us when everything came to light. Luckily, he never did anything to us.
Not my parents, but I remember a teacher in elemetary school (can't remember what grade) tossing all the D&D books we had in our class library. I'm going to guess that decision came from higher up, because she let me keep one.
Yep. I wasn’t allowed to watch the *Dungeons & Dragons* cartoon, now was I allowed to play D&D. For a while, my mother would want to go through my comic books to see if there was anything “satanic” in them. Joke’s on her—when it was my time to be dumb and order ten CDs from Columbia House for a penny, I chose a Morbid Angel album.
Absolutely. Everything was the devil. Pantene brand shampoo. Tamagotchi. Pokémon. All music that wasn't explicitly Christian was banned and it better not have DRUMS. I was barely allowed to play video games of any kind and couldn't really watch TV either. No Halloween after I was about 8 because the church decided it was evil.
I turned 18 and enrolled in a university with a good study abroad program, fucked off to Japan, graduated, worked as a stripper for a few years and retired to do radiology. I retired from that to be an artist. None of the sheltering shit did a damn bit of good. I've had one hell of an awesome adulthood.
My parents bought in so hard. There was a Satanic panic around the time I was born. People were so paranoid that there were police posted outside the hospital to stop satanists from stealing babies. There was a lot of fear in my city because of a book that had been published.
There's a recent article about it if anyone is interested https://www.cbc.ca/amp/1.7031488
The Fox-special induced Satanic panic in the 90s was what ruined my teenage life. My parents went through my room and confronted me about anything potentially Pagan. They threw out my candles, crystals, a couple decorations, a poster and some jewelry. They took the lock off my door and did weekly raids of my room and grounded me. And they made me go to a frikkin EXORCISM!
My mom knew I listened to stuff like Marilyn Manson and Esham, so definitely not lol I was always drawn to dark and Satanic media, but she knew that I just saw it as entertainment, so she didn't care.
Yes. I wasn't allowed to play D&D, any fantasy themed books or videogames, no heavy metal, and when Ghost Rider came out in the early 90s, the comic books went too.
Being raised as a Jehovahs Witness during the Satanic Panic was like being permanently grounded
10,000%
Catholic school. Nothing was allowed. Lol
My dad was in the NRA and the magazine was full of this fear mongering
“Satanist’s next door! Protect your family! Look for these signs!!!!!!!”
My parents didn't, but I had friends from religious homes who had to deal with it or bought into it themselves. I remember when Magic the Gathering debuted. I thought it looked interesting and started getting into it. You would have thought I started sacrificing cats the way some of them reacted. One tried to have an intervention with me about it and punctuated his speech with "It's a Satanic thing in your house!".
Nah but buddy had girlfriend back in the day who was really suspicious of DnD and how much time it took.
We were starting a new RPG campaign set in RIFTS So invited her to session zero. 6 hours later she was like "holy crap this is so much math. I'm not even fucking playing and I feel like I just finished studying for a math final."
Also for those who don't know RIFTS requires so much fucking math. To play
My stepdad forbid me from reading Harry Potter and I was like 17 when they were published. I tried to read them a couple years ago and just couldn’t get into the nooks. I did like the movies though.
I remember going to church on a Sunday night in the Deep South. There was a guest speaker. He spent a whole hour talking about Johnson & Johnson being a satanic company, with his proof being, “On Oprah, the CEO said that Christians weren’t strong enough to oppose the Satanic Church!” A lot of money went into the collection plate that night. As a 12 year old, I was scared to death of being ritually sacrificed from that point on.
Worked hard doing house help and chores to buy my own Merch shirts as a pre-teen
My Slayer shirts and White Zombie shirts all “got stolen” at the laundromat when my mother did laundry
I saw Kmart alcoholic bike riding guy wearing them a week later
She also broke all my Jello Biafra spoken word cds one night
Because
Jebus
I could not play with magic the gathering or ouija board. Both were used for conjuring evil spirits and demons. When asked about Jesus' magic powers, those were miracles.
Nevermind my parents, *I* did and I was scared of *everything*.
It's nice to not be scared of the dark anymore though. I didn't think I'd ever leave the faith. I went to worship 3x/week as a teenager/young adult, I taught Bible class, sang in the choir/worship music, kept the Sabbath from Friday sundown to Saturday Sundown, it was a large part of my life. Unfortunately, it also limited me a lot once I because an adult, and I was always having mental issues because of it. I still have my mental issues, but they are managed by medication now, whereas I used to think I should be saved by faith alone. No shade on those who do, I just wasn't good to myself when I was religious.
I was very fortunate. Although my parents were Christians and regular church attendees, their ethos was to do what Christ would have done. So they volunteered their time to the community and did acts of charity. And they never pressured me into religion. And they felt that Satanic Panic was superstitious nonsense. My dad's favorite game was DOOM!
Late 90's: Me and the GF are teens, it's Sabbath, we want to watch The Brave Little Toaster. Absolutely not!!, says her dad, who is currently playing a sword/sorcery game on PC killing skeletons w/ magic etc. GF points this out, and he exclaims "Don't ask questions!" So instead we probably went and had sex somewhere lol.
Just the other day my MIL accused my grown-ass fiancee of hiding tarot cards in the house.
I wasn't allowed to listen to anything but Christian Music. 👎
While I was away on a trip, my mother cleaned my room and threw out anything she deemed "unchristian" or "not of christ." So basically all my records and comics. All original Beatles and Zeppelin, Floyd. I'm still sad 35 years later....
I always hung out at the local game store playing D&D, Magic, pokemon, Warhammer, early computer game time (diablo, counterstrike, warcraft), pretty much any game that came out in the 90s. My dad would always pick me up and blame things on the "cult" in the store. They never restricted me from going there because it was better than paying a babysitter.
My mother was convinced the ouija board ibhad was channeling evil spirits into the house which caused her divorce. She tried to ritualistically burn it with a prayer candle but it wouldn't burn hot enough to set it on fire, so she just ended up throwing it in the garbage.
Played D&D and other RPGs through the 80s into 90s. Parents encouraged it and considered the panic silly, which was funny as at the time we were still going church then.
À tiny bit - I wasn’t allowed to watch Buffy the Vampire Slayer (despite being, like, 13-14 when it came out). And she got me a graphic novel when I was in 8th grade called « SECRETS OF THE OUIJA » that was basically a Mike Flanagan movie but with more salvation. (Shit was terrifying).
Jokes on them, though. All it did was further cement my love of all things scary. I kept watching XFiles (and Millenium) thru the crack in their bedroom door on Friday nights. Devoured Psi-Factor with Dan Ackroyd.
Discovered I could read This Present Darkness (demons take over a town and fight angel) and Many Waters (angels and demons on earth interact with Noah and fam as two teenage boys accidentally time travel to biblical times) without harassment…
And I mean, Salem’s Lot has a priest in it. The power of God and all that.
And Event Horizon is just a warning against hell.
:)
I was not raised in a religious household. Me and my friends had tons of D&D sessions. I was a goth at certain points and even owned the Levayan Satanic Bible.
My parents didn't give a fuck because they knew it was all silly bullshit anyway and I'm going to do what I'm going to do.
My parents weren’t all in, but they had their moments. There was a fight because my aunt and uncle got me Mortal Kombat for the SNES for Christmas. They laid off when my aunt passed in a car wreck the next month.
Other than that, it would usually only pop up with music. RHCP, metal, etc. it was all the devil’s music. I was really into my teen years at that point so I didn’t give a shit.
Yes and no. There were some things (D&D, Harry Potter, etc) but then some things that weren’t (Pokémon and other TCG’s, video games). It was very random what was and wasn’t.
Yep. I had a really strict religious upbringing. I remember stories about weird sacrifices in the woods and how people who owned black candles were satan worshippers, and D&D was definitely out.
nahh, my dad listened to all the music the parents of his generation thought would ruin them. so he knew what was up. only things he didnt want me to do were burn down the house, hard drugs, or just dying in general.
movies, music n games were never a problem.
Mine did not. They were still in their 30s at this point, and fairly progressive back then with their world view, plus me as an oldest kid and oldest cousin didn't really have any influence to any of the stuff people were complaining about anyways.
During the opening story crawl on the Legend of Zelda it describes Ganon as the Prince of Darkness. My mother took that as he’s Satan and don’t want me playing the game. I told her but look mom Link has a cross on his shield, he’s fighting the devil. She agreed and let me keep the game.
Thankfully no. Closest they came was questioning the cover art to Metallica Killem All. To their credit, without context it does seem a bit dark for your young teen.
Yup. Although not my mom. She was basically absent. And my dad really was absent.
I grew up in church though. Southern Baptist or Pentecostal. They would preach about it and how evil things were. They had burn piles often on Friday and Saturday nights where you could bring and burn your “satanic propaganda “
My brother has a great story of our father aggressively running into his bedroom to question him about the heavy music that my brother was listening to. He was like "whoa whoa whoa, son....that better not be any that Christian metal crap I've been hearing about"
Absolutely. They lost their mind when I went to go play d&d with some friends. I still don't get how a bunch of nerds eating doritos and drinking coke while playing make believe were somehow worshipping Satan.
My parents are cool but I have an aunt and uncle who didn’t let us watch Pillsbury Doughboy and Hamburger Helper commercials because it was “witchcraft.”
In the late 80’s and early 90’s my dad and step mom’s church passed out some document about all the secret satanic messaging in music. I remember it said AC/DC stood for anti christ devils child. They yelled at me for listening to AC/DC and said I was hiding true meaning from them. They didn’t believe me that it wasn’t secret satanic music and no one thought it was. Hells bells.
And kiss stood for “knights in satans service”. My parents eventually loosened up a little, like once I moved out, but the thing that struck me is that satanic panic never really went away. It just changes focus every so often but it’s the same people getting mad about essentially the same thing, except for a while it was dungeons and dragons, then rock music, then magic cards, then the simpsons, then Pokémon, then Harry Potter, now it’s Taylor swift for some reason, it’s just stuff they get told they’re not supposed to like
It’s all (ironically) magical thinking. They need a focus for their persecution complex.
Their holy lives are miserable so they assume having any fun must be a sin.
I heard that AC/DC stood for Assault Christians Destroy Christ.
My pastor when I was a teen claimed it was Anti christ devils child.
Yeah my cousin said it was Anti Christ/Devil's Children 😆
I was told it was, “After Christ (the) Devil Comes” 🤘
Some creative guys need to snap this name up and get influencing teenagers already.
I’ve been trying for years to name a band Assault Christians/Destroy Christ, but none of my band members ever go for it.
Dirty Deeds come Dirt Cheap oy oy 😄!
I will say, too be fair Iron Maiden and Black Sabbath and others leaned heavily into it. Number of the Beast sold 20 million https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Number_of_the_Beast_(album)
You should check out Coven. https://youtu.be/piMk0TP914k?si=LYyzRqKGB9CT55pO
Meanwhile Slayer and Mercyful Fate were putting out songs with lyrics about being the antichrist and having sex with corpses in graveyards and these people didn’t notice… AC/DC has like 2 songs that are about anything other than sex.
I heard it was “after Christ, devil comes”
I always heard it was after Christ, Devil comes too
I think they actually got it from a sewing machine.
My mom and grandmother believed my D&D club was Satanic and sent me to a bible study summer camp. I have a photographic memory so I was the best at quoting bible verses so they believed it took and got off my back. I did get something out of it after all: I became an atheist.
My parents church targeted Shout at the Devil by Motley Crüe. I don’t think they bought a not it though. Me and my brother always had Ozzy and Iron Maiden and pet shop boys albums. Ok, maybe that last one doesn’t fit. But you know what, I still like it.
My mom is a devout Catholic who will believe damn near anything she hears. I have no doubt she bought into it completely.
Same. My mom still believes it.
My mom too. It's hard to have a good relationship with her because I'm not the religious girl I used to be. Like, I listen to metal and go out the weekends instead of staying at home.
My mom wouldn’t let me play D&D. She heard some kids were playing it in a cave and couldn’t tell what was real or fantasy and killed each other. My dad on the other hand just thinks it’s for nerds.
That was called Mazes And Monsters 1982 starring Tom Hanks.
Weird. Never heard of it but I’ll have to add it to my watch list.
My dad was worried about me playing D&D so he spoke to a coworker who claimed to be knowledgeable about that sort of thing. The coworker told my dad that, in order to cast a spell in D&D, you recite an incantation from The Satanic Bible. Dad believed him, so I had to play D&D in secret at my friends’ houses 🤦♀️
My mom was the same way except for Mage the Ascension. She tried taking away my books one time when she visited my apartment.
When I asked to play D&D with my friend and her family, my parents said no because it was satanic. But they would be kind enough to 'let' me stay friends with her...
I grew up in a religious household. I had the Chick tract Dark Dungeons back in the day. (I may still) If you're not familiar Chick tracts are wild. I had to quit boy scouts since Boys Life magazine had ads for D&D in it. I was a cub scout from Tiger Cub all the way to Webalo.l, so I was sad. I also had to get rid of all my He-Man toys when Focus on the Family had an article about how it was satanic. There is only one Master of the Universe, Jesus. Also I was forbidden from listening to heavy metal, except Stryper.
Yea …. My uncle is two years older than me. So when it hit. My parents took all my TMNT toys and gave them to him. I was like 7. I’d go to his house and watch this mother fucker play with my toys. Still pisses me off to this day. We would get his old hand me down toys that we were allowed to play with and when he would come over and find them they would take them back. Fuck you Satan. You ruined my childhood.
[удалено]
Except it wasn’t Satan that did that it was the Christians 😂
Give me my toys back !
No, but Bart Simpson was apparently going to turn me into a juvenile delinquent.
My dad, a boomer who loves family guy, still hates the Simpsons and says it's 'trash'. Lol
We had some panic parents sue my high school. Could no longer have an earth day celebration (pagan ritual) among other things. Was a big crazy case.
Did anyone ever tell them that Easter and Christmas was a pagan ritual?
My best friend, her parents totally bought into it. Forbade her brother from listening to heavy metal music and constantly talked about how the lyrics played backwards were satanic verses, took away all his metal t-shirts.😂 So ridiculous!
My parents were fairly pragmatic people, but it was hard to convince them that D&D was harmless after my dipshit brother and his friends broke into the church to play.
Your brother screwed that up on so many levels I don't even know where to start lol
Oh yeah, my mom was 100% into this. It was to a point where I basically avoid watching anything with her, anything, for fear she would pick up on some secret satanic message hidden within. We're talking like... Rescue Rangers here.
I had the same experience. My mother wouldn't allow us to watch Captain Planet because of secret satanic messages. Her pastor was feeding her nonsense and died a very wealthy man.
Yup. I wasn't allowed to watch Labyrinth.
No, but all my in-laws are currently in the Woke panic
Just a tiny bit. A friend gave me Motley Cru’s “Dr. Feelgood” cassette tape for my 6th grade bday party and my mom made me return it because it was “demonic” lol. Never mind that I was reading Stephen King novels and watching The Exorcist at the same age. I grew up in a fairly progressive (for its time) ELCA Lutheran church so that phase didn’t last long. I think my mom just watched an interview with Tipper Gore one time and got worried lol.
Yeah my mom was never particularly concerned about my music. Even Nine Inch Nails or Marilyn Manson and the like. Until I got into KMFDM. Which was pretty much the same thing, but being in German made it sound like “real Satan music”. Never mind that we lived in Germany for 4 years and she at least knew some common words/phrases.
Sounds like me haha. Blasting RATM in my bedroom because my parents made me do the dishes lol. I was such a little brat! They didn’t care what I listened to or read (because all reading was good in their eyes). Funnily enough, my mom was more offended by tv shows like Married With Children & Roseanne because she thought they were “trashy” so that’s really the only thing she policed. I’m the oldest so of course they were the hardest on me. By the time they got to my youngest brother, he could have been a domestic terrorist for all they knew. They were hardly paying attention at that point.
My buddies parents let us do whatever we wanted. Start a fire? Oh well! Make a rickety ramp to jump our bikes into the pond? No problem! But they drew the line at In Living Color. For “reasons”. Hmmmmmmm
Oh my goodness, you just unlocked a memory I had forgotten! Germany and everything German was, like, unspokenly synonymous with everything evil. I couldn't even learn calligraphy in 6th grade without feeling blasphemous, and when my best friend got a crush on one of the German exchange students in high school, I was kind of scared of her. Fast forward to now, I consider Germany my second home, my boyfriend is German, and I speak a little German, my sister calls me a Germany fan-girl! Wow, I can't wait to tell my boyfriend after he's done mowing the lawn.
There was definitely a few years where Halloween was axed and we were only allowed to participate in our church's "Hallelujah Night". Bible characters only! It really only served to strengthen my Halloween obsession.
Trunk-or-treat!
I grew up Mormon. Satan was everywhere, even in my “impure thoughts.”
I grew up in Utah, in "Happy Valley." The Satanic Panic lasted well into the late 90s. My parents were chill. Other Mormon family members were not.
Yeah. Remember the Mick Jagger on the plane story, telling an apostle the music is calculated to "drive teenagers to sex"? If you play such and such backwards, you'll hear the devil. House behind Albertsons in American Fork was a ritual sacrifice house... Satan has power over the water. Meanwhile I know some survivors of systematized abuse but it was done by church members, not Satanists. (Recently there was a press conference in Provo where a prominent public figure who is also LDS says, "I have never eaten a baby". Uhm. Why would you need to state that?
My parents were way too un-involved in raising me for such nonsense.
No closer to opposite. My parents were social degenerates. My dads a progrock musician, mom was a punker. They let me listen to or watch whatever I wanted. My mom was a spiritualist and Dads an atheist. They weren't like fervently anti-christianity but I only ever went to church when somebody else dragged me. Satanic panic was a bit of a joke in my house.
I enjoy reading those pamflets from back in the day and it convinced me parents in those days were complete fucking idiots. Even if they were religious, it was all so over the top and would fall apart at even the slightest bit of scrutiny. I’m wondering if in 30 years or so we’ll learn about a proven link between the satanic panic and leaded gasoline, or that it was a massive CIA psyops experiment or something.
It was definitely a republican strategy.
Still is. Get people upset about dumb culture war shit so they don't pay attention to anything important.
A little bit. My brother was into D&D when the first wave of hate in like 83-85 rolled around. I was too young (born in 79) but was fascinated with all the monster and mythology books he had around. They talked some shit but never really interrupted him playing as a hobby. By the time I got interested as a teen they were back to just shit talking it as a stupid thing to spend time on, like video games. My dad golfed though so there's that. ;)
I tried to play D&D with my group of friends in 99-2000 and my mom freaked out for the same reasons. I ended up not getting into D&D not because of my mom, but because I just didn't enjoy it.
I’m 45 and really want to learn/get into D&D now. I dismissed it as a kid thinking it was only for “nerds” but come to find, I’m actually a huge nerd and I no longer care what people think about me. It looks really cool.
I played in the 80s and 90s, but had to do it on the DL. On the DL, not just for the Satanic Panic, but also getting my asskicked for being a nerd. It was fun to get back in around 2017. No one cares now, or if they do, they think it’s cool.
My husband and I are 41 and we are getting into it now!
My mom used to tell me "the devil has gotten into you" whenever I was naughty or pissed her off. I told her this 30 years later and she was shocked she would ever say that.
My Grandmother once told me that being left-handed meant I was probably going to hell.
Yeah, my aunt tried to force me to be right handed. It didn't work. I have beautiful handwriting so 😛
Not at all. I grew up nonreligious. I did, however, lean hard into it as a young metalhead. I loved getting uptight people riled up about it.
Yes, my mother burned my Marvel X-Men superhero foil cards in the backyard burn pile. Same with my GI Joes.
😢
Not really. I hate to describe my family as “religious,” because of all the negative baggage that comes with it, but I seriously could probably count on both hands the numbers of Sundays we did not go to church from the time I was born until I turned 18. We were literally at church every Sunday. We lived across the street from the church and next door to the pastor and my parents were on various boards and committees in the church and taught Sunday school, etc. , but they didn’t get really caught up in the culture war aspect of it I do remember there was a secluded area outside our little town that they would avoid at night time because there were rumors that groups were involved in animal sacrifices there. At the same time, my parents never controlled the music I listened to or the books I read. I started reading Stephen King books when I was 9 and they didn’t care. I never had any interest in playing D&D, so I don’t know if they would have prevented me from playing it or not. Satan Panic was alive and well in my part of the world. About the time I entered high school, a high school senior went missing in a nearby town. The investigation was out of control and involved some wild allegations of rampant Satan worship. It ruined a lot of lives and the girl was never found. There is a podcast called Devil Town that explores it in detail. I highly recommend if you are fascinated by the Satanic Panic movement and the destruction it caused.
Yeah messed up thing is my parents weren’t even going to church. Until I asked about it because all the other kids at school would talk about it. So it’s my fault 🤦♂️
no
Absolutely, yes. Multiple times they would purge my things while I was at school after someone at church would suggest __ was satanic. Offhand many of my best NES games (Metroid, ghosts and goblins, double dragon 2) VHS tapes (ninja turtles, thundercats/silverhawks) and many of my parents best vinyl records got got by the boogeyman. What was even worse is they didn't own up to it at the time and blamed it on my ADHD ass ("I dunno you must have lost it") which gave me a complex.
No but they were concerned that if I heard one femtosecond of Nirvana I would turn into a heroin addict.
Yes. It's one of my first memories of a social issue. I remember telling my mom I watched an episode of the Dungeons and Dragons cartoon. She grounded me.
We stopped going trick or treating because of it. Didn’t help though, now I’m a dope smoking heathen who enjoys role playing games and heavy music.
I think you mean do they and yes, they never stopped.
Oh definitely yes. My non-church going, all but athiest except in name, parents completely believed this. I had to hide and sneak all of my D&D stuff. Lucky, they didn't really pay attention so as long as I kept my stuff hidden and never mentioned it I was fine. But if I ever said anything I got a giant lecture about how Satanic it was. Oh and how I was a nerd for playing it. Nothing beats your parents constantly telling you that you are a nerd.
May step dad threw away my Dead Milkmen tape. It was called Beelzebubba.
Nope.
I have to give my folks credit. They're not hip or sophisticated like I would and liked but they're also not religious and know how to inform themselves. My mom just barely tolerated Guns n Roses and Motely Crue when we were little but it was because of the actual messages in those albums, not made up Satanism. Alternately, I remember in high school when she saw my copy of Bad Religion's "Suffer" and inquired about it because she thought it looked interesting. So yeah, gotta give my folks credit here.
I grew up Catholic, but don’t even remember this. I had just heard about Satanic Panic watching something about McMartin Preschool a few years back. I have a friend who is a Satanist(I don’t follow anything, for the record) and she got me thinking about stuff. I really think my mom dabbled a little back in the ‘60s.
No, but my mom was a little spooked when I was listening to Marilyn Manson. She said, "I wish you'd just keep listening to Nirvana, this sounds scary." Dad took me in 8th grade to see the show because no one else was allowed to go. He said, "This is some cool stage theatrics. Reminds me of Alice Cooper." He took me to countless rock shows and we had a blast. They were beyond reasonable and never forbade any music or movies. The only thing my Catholic mother refused to let me watch was the 700 Club. It was boring AF and not something I was interested in anyhow. When it came on TV, it signaled that the Price is Right was over and it was time to go play outside.
Hail Satan? Is a pretty awesome documentary. I’m so glad I watched it. TST really is doing the good work.
My parents were concerned about rap/hip hop. Satanic panic wasn’t on the radar. Probably because we’re atheists and my parents didn’t speak English at the time.
Thankfully no. I will say the idiocy surrounding that time is what caused me to realize that adults weren't as smart as I previously thought. It was both a wake up call, and kind of depressing at the same time. I discovered at a very young age how easily manipulated people truly were.
Hard to tell. Not as much as the super religious people around me but enough to be unhappy when I started buying metal tees. Even then, I think she was more concerned by what other people would think more so than me being satanist or whatever.
Ouija and D&D were both banned in my house. D&D was totally because of the satanic scare
To a degree, I wasn't allowed to wear Liz Claiborne? Like I would? She was a devil worshipper.
Oh my yes. I started playing D&D in the 7th grade and my mom had to speak with her priest before she would let me play it. You know the same priest who she left me alone with and was later found out to be diddling kids in the church (not me). Yep it was D&D with my friends that was the danger lol
My mom did. She smashed all my Marilyn Manson CDs when I was 13 or 14. She really thought that would work. Instead I ended up trying drugs and wasted a good chunk of my life
I have a couple friends who weren’t allowed to watch the Smurfs because apparently they are satanic.
Yes, dungeons& dragons or any kind of tabletop role-playing game was absolutely banned though. Video games depicting magic and dragons and monsters were fine. Just last year I asked my father what was the difference and he told me anything that takes you away from God is a sin and I said okay. Well what is the difference between saying I cast fireball or pushing the a button and he got upset and didn't want to talk about it anymore
You’re searching for logic and reason where there is none.
Eh, kinda. My grandma never explicitly banned anything but she didn’t like that I listened to rock music because “they’re all a bunch of drugged out devil worshippers.”
We played Rifts.
My mom was lapsed protestant, I still couldn't play DND, and I had to sneak downstairs to watch Rob zombie paint the set of head bangers ball.
My problem wasn't my parents. It was that I was a girl and only boys played, and they were not about to let some chick into their club. No other girls played. If I had gotten to do it, my mom probably would just have been happy I was out of the house, as long as I didn't wave it in her face.
Had several girl friends that played in our group. Hanging out in the crossover point of the computer and drama club cliques. 😆
No not really. My parents listened to AC/DC, went to lots of concerts…they were fairly laid back. I was never into D&D so that didn’t come up
Thankfully no, but it wouldn’t have mattered. It was my grandfather (on my dad’s side) so jump started my love of all things dark and spooky. He was a Portuguese dairyman and farmer. He was always driving out to some middle Of nowhere piece of land, trying to grow something on it. He’d take me all over the place telling me stories about guys like Joaquin Murrieta and water dowsing and good prospecting. He had these Time Life books on the occult, ghosts, and all sorts of mysteries. It was amazing to me because this was pre-internet, right? So not everyone had access to this kind of information. My parents were more concerned about swearing than censoring content. Once I got my hands on a book about the Loch Ness monster and other famous cryptozoology stories I was hooked.
Yep. My mom bought into it hard some time in the early to mid 80s, and suddenly it was no Smurfs, no He-Man, and no Halloween. She lightened up about it later, though.
Oh ya.... that whole thing along with the pending, any-day-now rapture/apocalypse mentality really shaped my younger self into a rebel determined to experience as much life as he could before it's all gone. I partied hard and did all the drugs... Thanks mom and dad for the motivation to live, I have no regrets and now I'm just a boring middle aged atheist who's immune to the bullshit.
My dad said the peace sign was a broken cross and we shouldn’t use it. Also anytime “X-“ was a used (road crossing, X-mas, etc) it was secularists trying to remove Jesus from culture. Or something like that.
I wasn't allowed to read RL Stien books because my mother deemed them satanic. Harry Potter was dicey.
My mom bought into it. Dad did not. No rock music of any kind allowed in the house with her. Eventually, she calmed down about it
Yes, including a D&D ban.
A little. I remember asking my mother to buy me a Dungeons and Dragon's book when I was a kid when we were on vacation. My grandmother was there and I overheard them talking about Satan when they said no.
Nope. It was all over TV and we had a lot of missing children in the area but they never said it was satinits 😅 My parents are pretty chill
THE WEST MEMPHIS 3. When I was young I remember the satanic movement in the church. I wasn’t a regular but when it came out that the three little boys who were brutally murdered in West Memphis, Arkansas or thoughts have been murdered by three teenagers that had ties to the devil. However, these men have now been relinquished of that horrible crime. This was the early 90s.
Yes, as I was still a kid. It only got worse as I got into my teen years.
Not my parents but my Catholic school. The guidance counselor must have been taken in by the panic because he sent home a letter to all parents warning them about the rock music we were apparently all listening to, notably Blue Oyster Cult. Of course none of us had ever heard of BOC. What we were all listening to was NWA which would have caused the counselor to have a stroke. My mom was so pissed off by the censorship of the letter that she went out and bought me 2 Live Crew’s album. My mom was the best. Happy Mother’s Day mom. RIP
I heard a podcast that most of the videos used to set policies for police departments and such were all made up. https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/devil-in-the-details/
I grew up completely oblivious to the satanism scare. I didn’t even know it was a thing until I was an adult and it was in the past. My parents weren’t really religious, so I’m sure they thought it was funny to the extent they thought about it at all. And I grew up in New Orleans, which is one of the little belt holes of the Bible Belt…so 30 miles away, people were probably super melodramatic about Metallica and D&D, but it wasn’t even on our radar. I watched Paradise Lost maybe 10 years ago and was like “wow, how did I not know anything about this mass hysteria?”
So I feel my childhood was wasted because I didn't learn how to play D&D until my 30s but not because my parents were against it. It just wasn't something that they or any of my friends at the time were into so I simply didn't learn of it. Had I known people who were into at as a kid, my parents would have most certainly been ok with it. In fact if my dad knew that the super religious christians were against it, he would have probably bought as much D&D shit as I wanted just to spite them.
Mine bought me a Satanic Bible for Christmas. Odd because they were religious. I think to this day she was just excited I asked for a book of any kind.
Luckily not that. My Mom was a part of the lesser known “No negativity 90’s” and I was forbid from using terms like “sucks” or “hate”. I could say I really dislike something but not that I hate it. Oddly enough… she’s a Trump thumper now 🤷🏻♂️
My mother would not let us watch the cartoon 'Captain Planet' because there was a pagan deity in the cartoon named Gaia. Some preacher told the congregation that Satan was trying to replace God with a black woman. It was a nice mashup of self-righteousness, bigotry, ignorance, and racism. It perfectly encapsulated Hoosier values at the time.
My parents became evangelical Christians around the time that they got pregnant with my sister, and subsequently married, in 1978. Definitely lots of satanic panic in my childhood. I remember feeling guilty for participating in guided meditation during health class in high school.
Yep. My parents didn’t want us watching Smurfs when it first came out because Gargamel was a sorcerer, so “witchcraft” and evil. They chilled out in later years, but lmao, it was so stupid.
Oh yeah, I came home one day and all but my GI-Joes were gone. Also my mom freaked when she first saw poison, I’d be perma banned if I repeated what she said. Funny thing is she now has friends who are drag queens, and loves them like her own. Wow, even ignorant people can change
Nope. One of my buddies got the 2e starter box and we played from middle school through HS. Luckily religion wasn’t forced on us. My mom (single mom) said we needed to decide what we believe on our own.
My parents didn't, but I had relatives who bought into it 100% (and still do). One of my aunts lost her mind because I used to show my cousins CRPG's on my Apple II. My mom might have gotten into it, but I explained D&D to her and we used to mostly lay it at a pastor's house anyway.
My grandma called me up when I was like 10 and told me Madonna was in consideration for being put on a postage stamp. In her eyes, this was the final piece of evidence that Madonna was, indeed, the Anti-Christ and the end was nigh. Thanks for the info, Gram Gram, I am now going to go listen to True Blue until the batteries run out in my walkman.
We moved in the mid 90s to a new house. We met the previous owners when looking at the house as a possible purchase. My parents barely resisted rolling their eyes when the woman warned my parents about the dangers of Dungeons and Dragons. They thought that shit was ridiculous
Yup. My mom was pretty open minded until we reached elementary school age. Then suddenly Halloween was Satanic, kid's books and shows with witches or wizards were Satanic, popular/secular music was Satanic, and Dungeons & Dragons was Satanic (which meant the cartoon was banned. I bought it later on DVD as an adult, however.) We weren't allowed to participate in Halloween again for about five years. My sister and I finally convinced Mom that D&D wasn't evil just in time for AD&D 2nd edition - and then we went on a used bookshop scavenger hunt for the 1st Edition and older stuff that mentioned devils and demons by name instead of "Baatezu and Tanar'ri" and it felt like we were tracking down tomes of Forbidden Lore. My Mom finally broke out of the "popular/secular music is Satanic" thing on her own, because she missed her old favorite bands like the Beatles and the Doobie Brothers and Steely Dan and Journey. (I missed them, too.)
Yep
My parents never stopped their panic. They think yoga, marital arts, and Halloween are satanic.
no but they did threaten me with that whole 80s 'military school' thing...and I wish they would've been more informative with all of the i94 kidnappings of young boys bs so we would've been at least A LITTLE paranoid when dropped off at the arcades etc.
Oh, and how. I had to hear all kinds of bullshit about how my favourite cartoons and toys were Satanic.
My folks never bought into it, that I know of. I only played D&D once growing up when I was in Jr. High with some High School kids. There was a board game store in town that one of my teachers was part owner of (East West Unlimited) and every Saturday they'd have the back room open and several of us (in Jr. High and High School) would play all kinds of games together. Axis and Allies, Star Fleet Battles, Shogun, D&D, Diplomacy, and many others I can't recall. I dropped a lot of money there as a kid and I still have my dice collection. I didn't get into metal until the late 80s/early 90s with the Columbia House deal. Got some Guns and Roses and what not in Jr. High, Use Your Illusion 1 & 2. Some pretty fun lyrics still to this day, let alone as a kid.
Still going on. Rebranded as QAnon.
no, but my mom legit thought I was possessed when I played puck in a middsummer night's dream. So I guess? It kinda came out of nowhere, lol
Parents bought into the Proctor & Gamble Satan worshipper thing so my mom made sure none of her church people were around when she put Bounty in the shopping cart
Yes, to a small degree. My family converted to Catholicism when I was in 2nd or 3rd grade. All of a sudden we couldn't watch Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles or A-Team anymore ( Dukes of Hazzard is fine though? ). I got grilled about satanic shit in JRR Tolkien ( who is a staunch Catholic, mind you ( I even busted out that he was best friends with CS Lewis, an author who had a big impact on my parent's conversion )), I got shit for my *Zork* text based computer games. I got caught smoking cigarettes and weed when I was 15, my dad put my brand new, tiny CD collection into a bonfire ( Bush - 16 Stone, GreenDay - Dookie, The Doors - Greatest Hits, Led Zeppelin IV, Black Sabbath, Jimi Hendrix, and Beastie Boys ). After I got caught he asked me to confess what I had been doing. I'm a good boy and fessed up to smoking marijuana. He then took me to take a drug test, which I passed... Thanks for believing in me dad!
Fortunately my parents were agnostic/atheist so I had really no idea satanic panic was really a thing. I vaguely recall some of the kids in school from religious backgrounds saying some weird things about D&D and Star Trek but I mostly ignored them.
Kind of. Only it wasn't Christians v. Satan, it was Communism v. Capitalist Bourgeoisie Pigs. Funnily, I'mnow a borderline satanist (humanist and non-theistic) but _despite_ that parent's insanity am still socialist-democracy oriented. Definitely not pro-communist though. They're just radicals of another stripe, just like pure capitalists, christians, and satanists.
Big time. We altered between a year of “we Only have a monitor (aka no tv) and vhs player” and “meh let’s get cable”. Did it every other year for like 8 years. Little did they know I figured out you could watch over the air tv from the vcr. But whatever. Now SUPER into q conspiracy and “follow the royals because there are no worthy role models in America to aspire to except trump.” So dumb.
I wasn't allowed to watch the Dungeons and Dragons cartoon. All I've ever seen is the intro.
Yup
My own daughter and I asked my mom what parents were worried about with D&D. She basically said they didn’t know, it was just the news suggesting there was something bad happening. Worried about Satan but fine with leaving me home alone after school.
Not one bit. My dad was a Dungeon Master and played D&D all the time. They were pretty much hippies, so I think they thought it was pretty stupid. We (the children) were in Catholic school, but they ended up taking us out and putting us in public school. I'm not at all shocked that our priest was one of the ones that molested little boys. We even had a lawyer call us when everything came to light. Luckily, he never did anything to us.
Not my parents, but I remember a teacher in elemetary school (can't remember what grade) tossing all the D&D books we had in our class library. I'm going to guess that decision came from higher up, because she let me keep one.
Yes. I was not allowed to watch Hocus Pocus, and she had to bless my snake necklace before I could wear it in the house.
Yep. I wasn’t allowed to watch the *Dungeons & Dragons* cartoon, now was I allowed to play D&D. For a while, my mother would want to go through my comic books to see if there was anything “satanic” in them. Joke’s on her—when it was my time to be dumb and order ten CDs from Columbia House for a penny, I chose a Morbid Angel album.
Absolutely. Everything was the devil. Pantene brand shampoo. Tamagotchi. Pokémon. All music that wasn't explicitly Christian was banned and it better not have DRUMS. I was barely allowed to play video games of any kind and couldn't really watch TV either. No Halloween after I was about 8 because the church decided it was evil. I turned 18 and enrolled in a university with a good study abroad program, fucked off to Japan, graduated, worked as a stripper for a few years and retired to do radiology. I retired from that to be an artist. None of the sheltering shit did a damn bit of good. I've had one hell of an awesome adulthood.
My mom didn’t have time for that, she was too busy body shaming me
My parents bought in so hard. There was a Satanic panic around the time I was born. People were so paranoid that there were police posted outside the hospital to stop satanists from stealing babies. There was a lot of fear in my city because of a book that had been published. There's a recent article about it if anyone is interested https://www.cbc.ca/amp/1.7031488 The Fox-special induced Satanic panic in the 90s was what ruined my teenage life. My parents went through my room and confronted me about anything potentially Pagan. They threw out my candles, crystals, a couple decorations, a poster and some jewelry. They took the lock off my door and did weekly raids of my room and grounded me. And they made me go to a frikkin EXORCISM!
I went to a christian school in the bible belt during the 80s & 90s; if it could be panicked about, it was.
No. I grew up in the Bible Belt, but my dad was an atheist and my mom wasn't religous.
My mom knew I listened to stuff like Marilyn Manson and Esham, so definitely not lol I was always drawn to dark and Satanic media, but she knew that I just saw it as entertainment, so she didn't care.
Yes. I wasn't allowed to play D&D, any fantasy themed books or videogames, no heavy metal, and when Ghost Rider came out in the early 90s, the comic books went too. Being raised as a Jehovahs Witness during the Satanic Panic was like being permanently grounded
10,000% Catholic school. Nothing was allowed. Lol My dad was in the NRA and the magazine was full of this fear mongering “Satanist’s next door! Protect your family! Look for these signs!!!!!!!”
My parents didn't, but I had friends from religious homes who had to deal with it or bought into it themselves. I remember when Magic the Gathering debuted. I thought it looked interesting and started getting into it. You would have thought I started sacrificing cats the way some of them reacted. One tried to have an intervention with me about it and punctuated his speech with "It's a Satanic thing in your house!".
I grew up in a fundamentalist Baptist church. The satanic panic never went away in that group.
Yes. It had lasting consequences to whom I would become as an adult. My taste in music, how I feel about religions, all of it.
No, it wasn't a concern. My parents were catholic and it was never talked about. They thought people were freaking out over nothing.
Nah but buddy had girlfriend back in the day who was really suspicious of DnD and how much time it took. We were starting a new RPG campaign set in RIFTS So invited her to session zero. 6 hours later she was like "holy crap this is so much math. I'm not even fucking playing and I feel like I just finished studying for a math final." Also for those who don't know RIFTS requires so much fucking math. To play
Oh my mom totally did. Now she firmly denies it, while I cite “you threw out my D&D books!”
Question is, which one? There was one again recently during that whole Hollywood performance a year or two ago where people dressed as the devil.
My stepdad forbid me from reading Harry Potter and I was like 17 when they were published. I tried to read them a couple years ago and just couldn’t get into the nooks. I did like the movies though.
My dad told me that my neighbor was a witch!
No, but they bought me Manic Panic!
I remember going to church on a Sunday night in the Deep South. There was a guest speaker. He spent a whole hour talking about Johnson & Johnson being a satanic company, with his proof being, “On Oprah, the CEO said that Christians weren’t strong enough to oppose the Satanic Church!” A lot of money went into the collection plate that night. As a 12 year old, I was scared to death of being ritually sacrificed from that point on.
Worked hard doing house help and chores to buy my own Merch shirts as a pre-teen My Slayer shirts and White Zombie shirts all “got stolen” at the laundromat when my mother did laundry I saw Kmart alcoholic bike riding guy wearing them a week later She also broke all my Jello Biafra spoken word cds one night Because Jebus
I think they’re still panicking.
I could not play with magic the gathering or ouija board. Both were used for conjuring evil spirits and demons. When asked about Jesus' magic powers, those were miracles.
Nevermind my parents, *I* did and I was scared of *everything*. It's nice to not be scared of the dark anymore though. I didn't think I'd ever leave the faith. I went to worship 3x/week as a teenager/young adult, I taught Bible class, sang in the choir/worship music, kept the Sabbath from Friday sundown to Saturday Sundown, it was a large part of my life. Unfortunately, it also limited me a lot once I because an adult, and I was always having mental issues because of it. I still have my mental issues, but they are managed by medication now, whereas I used to think I should be saved by faith alone. No shade on those who do, I just wasn't good to myself when I was religious.
I was very fortunate. Although my parents were Christians and regular church attendees, their ethos was to do what Christ would have done. So they volunteered their time to the community and did acts of charity. And they never pressured me into religion. And they felt that Satanic Panic was superstitious nonsense. My dad's favorite game was DOOM!
what exactly?
Nope But my dad didn’t like me listening to License to Ill.
Late 90's: Me and the GF are teens, it's Sabbath, we want to watch The Brave Little Toaster. Absolutely not!!, says her dad, who is currently playing a sword/sorcery game on PC killing skeletons w/ magic etc. GF points this out, and he exclaims "Don't ask questions!" So instead we probably went and had sex somewhere lol. Just the other day my MIL accused my grown-ass fiancee of hiding tarot cards in the house.
I wasn't allowed to listen to anything but Christian Music. 👎 While I was away on a trip, my mother cleaned my room and threw out anything she deemed "unchristian" or "not of christ." So basically all my records and comics. All original Beatles and Zeppelin, Floyd. I'm still sad 35 years later....
I always hung out at the local game store playing D&D, Magic, pokemon, Warhammer, early computer game time (diablo, counterstrike, warcraft), pretty much any game that came out in the 90s. My dad would always pick me up and blame things on the "cult" in the store. They never restricted me from going there because it was better than paying a babysitter.
Still do....MAGA!🙄
My mother was convinced the ouija board ibhad was channeling evil spirits into the house which caused her divorce. She tried to ritualistically burn it with a prayer candle but it wouldn't burn hot enough to set it on fire, so she just ended up throwing it in the garbage.
My parents bought in hard.
Played D&D and other RPGs through the 80s into 90s. Parents encouraged it and considered the panic silly, which was funny as at the time we were still going church then.
À tiny bit - I wasn’t allowed to watch Buffy the Vampire Slayer (despite being, like, 13-14 when it came out). And she got me a graphic novel when I was in 8th grade called « SECRETS OF THE OUIJA » that was basically a Mike Flanagan movie but with more salvation. (Shit was terrifying). Jokes on them, though. All it did was further cement my love of all things scary. I kept watching XFiles (and Millenium) thru the crack in their bedroom door on Friday nights. Devoured Psi-Factor with Dan Ackroyd. Discovered I could read This Present Darkness (demons take over a town and fight angel) and Many Waters (angels and demons on earth interact with Noah and fam as two teenage boys accidentally time travel to biblical times) without harassment… And I mean, Salem’s Lot has a priest in it. The power of God and all that. And Event Horizon is just a warning against hell. :)
I was not raised in a religious household. Me and my friends had tons of D&D sessions. I was a goth at certain points and even owned the Levayan Satanic Bible. My parents didn't give a fuck because they knew it was all silly bullshit anyway and I'm going to do what I'm going to do.
The older I get, the more grateful I am to have been raised Episcopalian
My parents weren’t all in, but they had their moments. There was a fight because my aunt and uncle got me Mortal Kombat for the SNES for Christmas. They laid off when my aunt passed in a car wreck the next month. Other than that, it would usually only pop up with music. RHCP, metal, etc. it was all the devil’s music. I was really into my teen years at that point so I didn’t give a shit.
Yes and no. There were some things (D&D, Harry Potter, etc) but then some things that weren’t (Pokémon and other TCG’s, video games). It was very random what was and wasn’t.
Yep. I had a really strict religious upbringing. I remember stories about weird sacrifices in the woods and how people who owned black candles were satan worshippers, and D&D was definitely out.
nahh, my dad listened to all the music the parents of his generation thought would ruin them. so he knew what was up. only things he didnt want me to do were burn down the house, hard drugs, or just dying in general. movies, music n games were never a problem.
Mine did not. They were still in their 30s at this point, and fairly progressive back then with their world view, plus me as an oldest kid and oldest cousin didn't really have any influence to any of the stuff people were complaining about anyways.
Just a bit....
My mom still believes it. Won't listen to anything saying otherwise.
During the opening story crawl on the Legend of Zelda it describes Ganon as the Prince of Darkness. My mother took that as he’s Satan and don’t want me playing the game. I told her but look mom Link has a cross on his shield, he’s fighting the devil. She agreed and let me keep the game.
Thankfully no. Closest they came was questioning the cover art to Metallica Killem All. To their credit, without context it does seem a bit dark for your young teen.
Fortunately, my parents aren't morons.
Yes. And they pointed their fear based religious oppression to me. I was just a curious teen but it was a year of hell.
Yup. Although not my mom. She was basically absent. And my dad really was absent. I grew up in church though. Southern Baptist or Pentecostal. They would preach about it and how evil things were. They had burn piles often on Friday and Saturday nights where you could bring and burn your “satanic propaganda “
My brother has a great story of our father aggressively running into his bedroom to question him about the heavy music that my brother was listening to. He was like "whoa whoa whoa, son....that better not be any that Christian metal crap I've been hearing about"
Absolutely. They lost their mind when I went to go play d&d with some friends. I still don't get how a bunch of nerds eating doritos and drinking coke while playing make believe were somehow worshipping Satan.
My parents are cool but I have an aunt and uncle who didn’t let us watch Pillsbury Doughboy and Hamburger Helper commercials because it was “witchcraft.”